As the 1st Quarter of 2016 begins to draw to a close, the life science market continues to remain exceedingly tight. Today, the overall economy added 242,000 jobs surpassing economists’ most optimistic forecasts. The overall unemployment rate has dropped to 4.9% which is the textbook definition of full employment. Furthermore, venture capital investment –the mother’s milk of the life science industry – surged to all time highs in 2015 according to The Wall Street Journal. What does all this mean? Despite the ever present talk of merger mania, with unemployment reaching lows not seen since before the The Great Recession and record levels of investment, there are more jobs available now than candidates to fill them.
In this pernicious war for talent, don’t discard candidates that don’t have the all the set criteria for a particular role. Expanding the criteria is important especially if your are looking in niche markets where the available candidate pool in small to being with, or where the salary range of the position is at or below the salaries of your competitors. This article explore ways that your can expand the candidate pool without sacrificing quality. Let’s face it: in this marketplace if companies continue to do thing the old fashioned way when it comes to hiring, their openings may remain unfilled longer than anyone would have imagined.